An Ecstasy of Fumbling
by misprint
Summary: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Slash. Slight AU so age can be preserved.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

The quiet moments take forever now.

Michael half remembers unquiet times, when stillness was the boy beside you blinking, the sound a throat makes when it swallows, parenthesized. Brief clicks, he remembers, like crickets at night, birds swooping over shelled fields, the absence of newspapers. But perhaps it is just a disparity in location – Paris sleeps through her afternoons, wearing her air close and wet. New York does not.

Unconsciously, he checks his heart. It is still there, performing it's slow rotations, so he lights another cigarette. From his balcony, magnolias, lilies perform slow_ pas-du-chats_ in the heat, and he tunnels his mouth, blowing smoke up. Beneath him a café bubbles jazz, a stray barks, a girl laughs.

_And suddenly he is there again, sitting beside him, whistling like a bomb._

Michael shakes his head and takes a deep drag off his cigarette.

_Thing I miss most is a goil's laugh. They're so priddy in a way you don't even realize 'till they're gone._

His lungs feel wet. His bones are unsettled. He dies for a cool breeze.

A guttural Model T turns the corner. Jean Shepherd obliges with a crescendo. Alone on his balcony in Paris, Michael calmingly notes the changes, his favorite game, he waits for the sweat on his palms to dry. More negroes in bars, bared knees winking at him like diamonds, men wearing rouge, women wearing wide brimmed hats, street cars extended from America like a hand in greeting. And, of course, there were the more urgent disparities; his German cigarettes, his clumsy French, his bad leg, his inability to breathe properly ever since. The ghost beside him kicks his feet in boredom.

_Spare?_

_What you got?_

Michael has to close his eyes and wait.

When he is done waiting, his cigarette is half gone, and he does not know how it has happened. He feels along the bones in his chest, ticking off calamities, noting each and every ridge. Here is Paris. Here is New York State. Here is Catigny. Sometimes he takes the train down to Saint-Jean-De-Luz. Cigarette in hand, shirt loose, he shuffles into the water and scans the horizon for America. It is hiding. The girls seem to like him in Saint Jean, coddle his bad leg and croon in pretty French. He has even made it with a couple. There is no point in lying now. _Je ne tene pour le guerre et la politique. Mais je tene pour la danse. Pourquoi ne dan_s_eraient-vous pas avec moi?_

_C'est mon jamb. C'est mal. _

_Boy. Some set up._

_Leave me alone._

Michael shifts, wanting noise.

_Pair-ee in the summertime. _

_She's a beauty._

The air is still and bloodless. The flowers crawl, imperceptible. The moon is waiting underground. Michael turns his head towards New York City, and listens.

_Spare? _

_What you got? _

_VD._

_That's not funny._

_Sure it is._

In the quiet that takes forever, Michael finishes his last cigarette and closes his eyes.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter Two**

Private Michael Norfield's eyes open.

All is black. His heart gives a sluggish thump as he waits for the sting, wondering. Gas this time? Or a Howitzer from directly above? "Over there in France, in a big ad-vance, little Johnny stood the test…" Jackson was singing down the line. "Johnny held his ground, now he struts a-round, with a medal on 'is chest…"

"Someone shut that fool up," Parks says from behind him. Michael blinks, takes time to inventory physical sensation, the stiffness of his shoulders, the itch along his scalp, the wet of his face. Must have rolled off the pack again. Jackson's voice gets closer.

"There's a happy look in his eyyyesss…"

"God almighty."

"And ev'ry now and then he criiiiesss…"

"_Shut_ your face, damn it."

"Yeah, why don't you sing it to the Krauts, Irving Berlin?"

The darkness shifts. A spark of light, the briefest shadows of men. Jackson's face appears through the muck, grinning.

"Mornin', Private." He says, slapping Michael's cheek. "Stand to."

Sensation, sweeping back. The scrape of bayonets being fitted, the occasional rattle of machine guns, like dice in a cup. Michael blinks the sleep out of his eyes and goads his tired body into movement, rolling out of his hole like a rat, feeling his feet hit unbroken duckboard. What his eyes take in is minimal – the low rut of the trench wall, the suck of water at his feet, the brief and understated forms of his fellow soldiers, the curves of their backs. He tests the board beneath him, and it does not break. At least those Poles were doing their job last night.

"I'm going to pin my medaaaalll…on the girl I left beeehiinnd…"

"I swear," and it's Parks again, suddenly beside him, shrugging his pack up onto his shoulders. "All it would take is one good sniper. That's all we need."

"Yeah?" Michael reaches for his pack, his bones feel like breaking. "Send a telegram why don'tcha."

"What do I need a telegram for? You can hear that sweet songbird all the way to Conneticut, I wager." Jackson hits the high note. Parks raises his eyebrows expressively.

"Alright soldiers!" A new voice, and Michael swears. His trousers are still caked with mud, eyes still sticky with sleep. "I want all feet up on the firestep! Keep your god damn heads under the parapet, all eyes on the line!"

Parks grumbles, as bodies all around them rustle. Michael can't see a thing, and he is used to it. Heavy with dirt, he rises, feels around for his rifle, cocks it experimentally. The smell of mud and rot, feet numb with the early morning cold, his bones feel thin.

"Norfield!" Des Santos, stepping into place beside him. "Still twenty for twenty?" 

"Shit."

"That's the spirit."

"_Stand to!_"

--

It is May 23rd, 1918, and new bodies are moving into Michael's trench.

He squints, sharp eyed, noting incongruities in the horizon. A new crater, well that's something, the limbs of a tree gone that were once there plain. Tangles of barbed wire that moved like snakes in the night under deluge. This he catalogues, all the while straining for enemy movement against the slowly brightening sky.

Des Santos is singing the same song Jackson was just under his breath, voice bending in sour keys. Parks grinds his teeth. Behind him he can hear the movement of men coming closer, no chatter, just the voices of their boots.

"Des, you wanna shut it?" Michael asks under his breath.

"Gee, Norfield, why you gotta be so glum all the time?" Parks says dully.

"Yeah," Des Santos grins through his gum. "Ain'tchoo never heard of glory?"

"Fall in, fall in," A voice yells out. "Yeah, I'm speaking plain English to you, you ain't digging in with _les premieres_ any more."

"New bodies," Des Santos remarks, casting an eye backwards. "Guess we gots to give up our one-man suites."

"Too bad, nice view," Michael said absently, eye catching on the wing of a lone bird.

"Shit," Parks spits. "It's like the Ritz up here."

"Find a hole for your shit," someone calls from down the line. "Up on the firestep, each and every one of you."

"Des, got more of that?" Michael asks, licking at the back of his teeth.

"Why?"

"Gotta have somethin' to do with my mouth."

"How about shut it?"

"Gimme some."

Michael feels Des' fingers fumble at his in the dark, the stick of chicle he passes is hard and old.

"Well," a new voice says from behind. "Be nice to get some real food for once, hey?"

"Don't count on it," Des says; the wet smack of his gum reminds Michael of bodies.

"Stand to, men."

"See anything?"

"Nothing."

Michael's eyes hurt with grime. A gun cocks behind him. He hears a bayonet being fitted, the sound of breath echoing briefly in an empty chamber, his senses have been accustomed to these sounds and he sees without seeing.

"Welcome to Catigny, boys."

"How long you been here?"

"Bout a month, doesn't look like we're leaving any time soon."

"Seen much action?"

"Eyes on the line, men!"

"Hig, move, god dammit."

"Jesus Christ."

"God_._"

"In this shithole?"

A shot rings out against the empty field. There is a dip in the voices behind him, a re-cocking of guns down the line, the sudden alertness of tightening machinery. Michael's fingers are numb, his teeth tight. His ears are ringing, and it's only after a moment that he realizes his gun is smoking. The barrel is warm as a body.

"What you seen?" Parks asks beside him, his eyes are birds of prey, darting. "An advance?"

"Naw," Michael says, his throat is dry; he clears it, smacking his gum. "Just...probably some fresh meat what decided to stick his head above the trench."

This is true. As Michael reloads blindly, eyes still fastened tight on the horizon, it is also not true. It is not true so he can go home. It is not true so he is not here. It is not true so he did not just have to kill another man.

_Oh shit, I think I killed it! Race!_

_Ahh, so what, it was a lousy cat._

_I didn't mean to!_

Michael shakes his head, flexes his fingers, feels the weight of the step under him shift as it takes on more bodies.

_Didn't mean to? You shot a god damn marble at it._

"What I tell ya?" Des Santos says. The gum is a flash of yellow in the darkness of his mouth. "Sharp as a tack."

_I was just joking around._

"Shut it, Des," Parks says. "Captain's coming."

--

After stand-to, it begins to rain.

"Son of a bitch," Parks murmurs, shucking the mud off his uniform with his bayonet.

"Des, you got them cards?"

"Somewhere in my pack."

"Shit, I'd kill for a coffee."

"You do kill for coffee," Michael mumbles, sliding down the wall until he is sitting. Some of the newer arrivals are sifting through their packs, making friends easily with new supplies of cigarettes, chocolates, leftover rum.

"Fellas," one of them says, offering up a thin box. "You boys smoke?"

"This one does," Parks says, cocking his head towards Michael, who obligingly reaches for the cigarettes. "Like a chimney."

"Thanks," Michael mutters sourly.

"He's also the glummest motherfucker you ever met in your life."

"Well," the newer man's smile is thin as a shard. "I can't say I've ever met a ray of sunshine what's been on the front for at least a day."

Michael fumbles with the matches, watching the paper dampen. A few stretcher bearers jog by, the mud sucks their boots.

"Shit," he swears, finally lighting the cigarette.

"McLeod," the man introduces himself to Parks and Des.

"You're new, then" Parks says, surveying him from under shaggy brows.

"My company just fought through the Meuse-Argonne," McLeod replies, the geniality of his voice shielding a swift, sharp edge. A knife.

"That's a tough front," Des Santos says apologetically, accepting a cigarette.

"You boys seen much action around here?" McLeod asks.

"Shelling the fuck out of us," Michael says, throat filled with smoke. "Sent a few troops over the top but nothing we couldn't stop cold."

"You should see this motherfucker with an Enfield," Des says, raising his eyebrows. "Sharp as a tack." He repeats, as though it means something.

"That so?"

"I guess," Michael replies. The cigarette is half gone, he does not know how it has happened.

"You guess shit," Des rolls his eyes. "You know how many Krauts this guys taken down?"

None, Michael thinks. The tip smoulders, closer to his fingers. The rain seems to suck him downwards. Above him, a chorus of boots. Below him, he knows, are the bodies.


End file.
